How to create Promothon templates

You can create a range of different email templates,
depending on the type of email you're trying to send.

We've provided simple but flexible template
tags that you insert into your HTML email template that allow
you to add your own content when creating a campaign.

Quick Example

To illustrate what you can do with the different
template tags, let's take a look at an example. You've just
designed an email newsletter concept for "ABC Widgets"
and now you want to import it into your account.

We've divided the newsletter up into
8 specific areas and we'll look at each these areas separately.

1. Repeating items

If your email is going to have an unknown number
of repeating items, such as individual stories or features,
then the tag is the way to go. This will allow you to add an
unlimited number of items to their email, each of which can
include a title, description and image.

You can add as many repeaters to your template
as you like. In the example above, we have a sidebar repeater
for secondary announcements under the title "In Short".
In the main column, we have a second repeater for our major
stories. This repeater also populates the table of contents
in the sidebar under "In this Issue". You can set
which repeater populates the table of contents by setting the
toc='true' value in your repeater tag.

Here's the syntax for a repeating item that
populates your table of contents and includes a title, description
and image.

As you can see, the entire repeating area is
wrapped in an opening and closing <repeater>
tag. Inside this we have the <$title$>,
<$description$> and <$imagesrc$>
tag. You will have full WYSIWYG editing capabilities for the
<$description$> content.

If you want to include an image in the repeater,
place the <$imagesrc$> tag in place of the normal image
URL. You'll notice we also specify a width for this image.
This means that every image you add to your repeating items
will automatically be resized to a width of 200 pixels.

You can include any HTML and CSS formatting
within the <repeater> tags to style your repeating elements.
For our example email above, the main <repeater> item
in the right column looks like this:

Connect a repeater with the table of contents
(optional)

By adding the optional toc='true'
attribute to your repeater tag, the titles from the repeater
will automatically be added to the table of contents as you
add your content (read more).

Make your title or image a link (optional)

By adding the optional link='true' attribute
to your title or imagesrc tags, you can easily add an associated
link to that element via the editor.

Set default values for title and description
(optional)

By adding the optional default='Your
text here' attribute to your title or description tags,
we'll display that text instead of the standard "title"
or "description" placeholder
text. This can be great to add reminders or guidelines to your
templates that give you a better indication of what content
to add where. Your default values can be simple plain text
or even full HTML.

2. Table of contents

If you've got a repeating item in your email,
we can automatically create a table of contents for you based
on the title the client adds (which will be inserted where
you have the <$title$>
tag). Here's the syntax:

<tableofcontents>
<$repeatertitle$>
</tableofcontents>

Just like the repeating item, we wrap a <tableofcontents>
and </tableofcontents>
tag around the area that will repeat. You also need to include
the <$repeatertitle$> tag,
which is where the title itself will be displayed.

Here's a sample of how the table of contents
would be formatted for our example email:

Your table of contents can only reference a
single repeater in your template. If you have one repeater
item in your template, that will be used for your table of
contents by default. If you have more that one repeater, add
the toc='true' attribute to the
repeater you want to be used. If you have multiple repeaters
and no toc='true' attribute is
present, we'll use the first repeater found in your code.

3. Individual items

For all those one-off bits of text or images
that don't need to repeat, you can use the individual item
tags. These include:

You will have full WYSIWYG editing capabilities
for the <$description$>
content. Just like inside a repeater, place the <$imagesrc$>
tag in place of the normal image URL you want to be able to
update. Make sure you specify a width for the image, as any
image your client adds in its place will automatically be resized
to that width.

Make your title or image a link
(optional)

By adding the optional link='true' attribute
to your title or imagesrc tags, your client can add an associated
link to that element via the editor.

Set default values for title and description
(optional)

By adding the optional default='Your
text here' attribute to your title or description tags,
we'll display that text instead of the standard "title"
or "description" placeholder
text. This can be great to add reminders or guidelines to your
templates that give you a better indication of what content
to add where. Your default values can be simple plain text
or even full HTML.

4. Link to a web based version

It's considered best practice to link to a web
based version of your email for those recipients that prefer
to read your email in their browser, or are using an outdated
email environment that does not support your email formatting.
The syntax for this is:

<webversion>link text or image</webversion>

Anything in between these 2 tags will become
a link to the web-based version of your template, which will
reside at your personalized sub-domain, such as http://yourname.createsend.com.

5. Forward to a friend

By adding a forward to a friend link to your
template, your recipients can easily pass the email on to up
to 5 friends at a time. You can even customize how this Forward
to a Friend page looks. To include a Forward to a Friend link,
use the following tags:

<forwardtoafriend>
link text or image </forwardtoafriend>
Anything in between these 2 tags will become a link to this
customizable Forward to a Friend page, which will reside at
the generic forwarding domain forward-email.com.

6. The all important unsubscribe link

Every template you design must include a single-click
unsubscribe link. You can customize what happens when this
link is clicked on a per-list basis. The syntax for the unsubscribe
link is:

<unsubscribe>link text or image</unsubscribe>

Anything in between these 2 tags will become
a single-click unsubscribe link for each of your recipients.

7. Date tags

The date tags make it easy to add date related
text to a template that updates based on when you send email
campaigns. Instead of having to add the text "November
Newsletter", you could automate this by using the current
month name tag, such as "<$currentmonthname$>
Newsletter". We'll populate the tag with the month
the campaign is being sent automatically when you send the
campaign.

8. Personalization tags

By adding any of the following tags to your
subject or campaign content, we will dynamically change these
values for every recipient when sending the campaign.

[firstname,fallback=customer] = First name
[lastname,fallback=customer] = Last name
[fullname,fallback=customer] = Full name
[email] = Email address

When personalizing a recipients name, you can
provide a fallback value which is displayed if that field is
empty for that recipient. If you would like nothing displayed
when a recipient's name field is empty, simply leave the fallback
value blank (e.g. [firstname,fallback=]).

You can also insert the values of up to 10 custom
fields into your emails in a similar way.